


Dead End

by willowsandwonders



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: AU typical violence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Basically everything that happens in YDYD but unironically, Descriptions of blood/injury, Multi, Temporary Character Death, YDYD AU, minecraft au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 16:16:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16021487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowsandwonders/pseuds/willowsandwonders
Summary: At first it's just a whole lot of shit luck. It starts with them ending up in a world where they can't respawn, and then Lindsay goes off and dies on their second day there. It's not like they won't see her in the next world, though, so they all do their best to move past it. It sucks, but it's not that different from other worlds they've gone through before.Same shit as always, up until Michael starts getting haunted by Lindsay's ghost.





	Dead End

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn't follow the YDYD "plot" exactly, but there are spoilers for how everything goes down! There are also light spoilers for events in Sky Factory, but both of those series are pretty old by now so hopefully it shouldn't be an issue.  
> In terms of warnings, "everything in YDYD but unironically" pretty much covers it, but let me know if you need more specific warnings! Basically, this story has everything that comes from a very flippant view of death and the general assumption that it isn't permanent.

It’s only  _their second day here_ and Lindsay is already dead. Figures. Right in front of their home base too, just fucking stupid and not paying attention. Michael's hardly surprised, more annoyed by it than anything. That’s what he tells himself at least, out on a hunt with nothing but a sword and an empty presence at his side that he has to fight to ignore.

This world is different than the others.

He felt it as soon as they woke up together in that empty field, they all did. It took literally vaporizing their factory in the sky to knock them loose from that reality into this one. They’d respawned carelessly there, slipping into the void only to be back on their feet seconds later. But his first breath in this new world had felt too heavy, his blood moving sluggishly through his veins.

Worlds without respawns are rare. Usually they can’t move on to the next world until they slip through the end portal. And even then they need to build the golden tower to link the world they’re in to the next. It tethers their souls, too, keeps them respawning instead of getting scattered across different worlds with every death.  _That’s_ always annoying to fix.

Trevor and Alfredo got here first, managing to get the golden tower up before they all came tumbling in and _someone_ got a little too careless with their own life. He directs his willpower towards not thinking about what could have happened to her if the tower hadn’t been up yet, if she would’ve been lost to the empty void they jump through from world to world. Michael shoves all his attention back towards the hunt before him instead of lingering on that idea--forcing down the part of him that lingers on the hope that Lindsay’s soul ended up in a kinder world, one that he can join her in soon.

 

\---

 

He makes it back to their home base at sundown, a dead pig slung over his back and a headache throbbing behind his eyes. Their base is lively, everyone rushing to get work done before the monsters start crawling out of the shadows. There’s too many gaps in their defenses and not enough hours in the day to patch them--for now they just hunker down at night and try to sleep through the snarls and hisses outside. But if he starts thinking about how shitty their protections are, he’s going to get even more stressed.

Right now all Michael wants to do is drop this pig off for someone else to deal with, then go to sleep and drown out this shitty day for a while. But he still waves to Jack where he’s watering his crops, then pretends to ignore Gavin where he’s fucking around with something on the roof. He’ll check on that later--no need to have another one of his idiots dying tonight.

He breezes past Alfredo inside, who’s fiddling with something that looks suspiciously like TNT. Goes past all the beds and finally gets to dump the pig on the floor of their makeshift storage room. He caught the damn thing, he’ll let someone else put in the time to prepare and cook it. When he passes that sentiment on to Alfredo he just nods, muttering something about how he’ll get to it in a second. Michael hears that as “after I blow everyone up,” and goes to wave Geoff over to actually get this shit taken care of.

Then it’s up to the roof to see what Gavin’s up to. Michael had stalked off to hunt after Lindsay died and it’s been hours since he’s seen him. The instinct to check him for any new injuries is powerful, and he frowns at a thin scratch running down his arm. Other than that he seems fine, though, and Michael relaxes.

His sigh of relief is embarrassing and loud enough to make Gavin startle, jumping up from whatever he’d been crouched over. Fucking idiot, not even noticing the racket Michael made clambering the makeshift ladder up here but freaking out over a little noise. At this rate he’ll need to put Gavin on a goddamn _leash_ to keep him alive for more than a few days, what the fuck--

A hand waves in front of his face and he jumps, almost stepping back off the roof. _Shit,_ he has no room to talk about Gavin getting distracted when he does the same thing seconds later.

“You’re spacing out on me, boi.” Gavin’s hand is a warm weight where it settles on his shoulder. Michael just nods, no point in trying to deny it. For a second Gavin just kind of _looks_ at him, drinking in all the details of his face. The moment feels strange, a little too heavy when they both know Lindsay isn’t gone forever. _(When they both know that in the last world, they were married too--)_

Then Gavin’s stepping back, a smile back on his face and proudly waving at a sad little pile of dirt in the middle of the roof.

“I’m planting a tree for Lindsay!” Michael has to squint to make it out, but he can just see the thin sapling with a few sad leaves poking out of the soil. In the factory, their trees had grown in minutes, springing to life using the kinetic energy around them. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to see the trees grow, even with all the natural kinds of magic taking days, if not weeks, to spiral out of the dirt.

“By the time that thing grows, we’ll all be fucking dead.” Science is kind of a weird thing for them when every world is a little bit different, but Ryan had explained to him one time that without their interference, most natural processes could take _years_. Michael thinks it’ll be a fucking miracle if any of them last in this world for a _week._

“Nah, Jack gave me some fertilizer! Look!” Gavin thrusts a handful of it at his face and Michael shrinks back, wrinkling his nose.

“You know fertilizer is literally _shit,_ right?” Gavin manages to look both offended and horrified at once.

“It’s made out of _bones,_ Michael!” He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and after a second Michael’s brain catches back up to the world they’re in now. Bone meal, yeah, he remembers Jack talking about making some earlier.

“So Jack beat the ever loving fuck out of a skeleton and gave you what was left, lovely.” Gavin doesn’t answer, just goes back to patting the soil, scattering the bone meal here and there. Michael sits down next to him in the fading light. Soon they’ll have to climb back down to take shelter from the night, but for now the quiet companionship is nice. He can hear the others milling about somewhere on the ground, probably packing up for the day and bringing any materials they’ve gathered back into the house. He smells food cooking, hears Geoff laughing about something, loud and raucous and bouncing off of the wooden walls.

“You think she’d like it?” Gavin breaks their silence, staring down at the sapling with an oddly serious gaze. Michael opens his mouth to say that, no, she wouldn’t because she’s fucking weird and would demand that they do some strange shit, like build a goddamn statue in her honor or something. They have to get creative with funerals when they usually respawn in a minute anyway, their dead bodies only lasting just as long. But _Michael_ likes the tree. Even if it never grows. Likes that Gavin thought to do this, to show it to him and give them both a place to think about her.

So he just nods around the sudden lump in his throat. He slings an arm around Gavin’s shoulders and tugs him close, taking a second to drink in the feeling of Gavin against his side, comfortable and familiar. _A little bit too familiar by now._ Then Gavin speaks again, pulling the words out of his mouth that he hadn’t even realized he’d wanted to say.

“It feels different this time.” He’s right. Michael’s felt it all day. He’s lived entire worlds without Lindsay before, and even then her absence never felt so complete. It makes him want to curl up in a ball and just let this world pass him by. But he needs to be here, if only to keep Gavin from getting himself killed every ten minutes.

He wants to look Gavin in the eyes and tell him that he needs to be careful this time. That maybe he could come back from every ridiculous stunt in the last world, but he needs to keep his feet on the ground now. That he can barely handle losing Lindsay, and one more blow like that will be too much. _(That it hurts because he loves them both more than he should and he doesn’t want to be left in a world without them.)_

“Let’s go inside,” Michael tells him instead. Before he can stop himself, he leans over to press a quick kiss onto Gavin’s forehead. He’s not quite sure what he means by it, but it feels like the right thing to do. Before either of them have to have a _talk_ about it he’s rushing to climb down the roof, his face burning no matter how much he tries to ignore it. But before his feet hit the ground he catches Gavin’s smile above him, glowing brilliant in the dim light.

 

\---

 

Their house is more of a shack if anything, plain wooden walls and floors and annoyingly cramped. Gavin uses it as an excuse to stay way too close to Michael as they weave around everyone, grabbing food and then getting ready to settle in for the night. Michael allows it after the shitty day they just had, and flips Ryan off when he raises an eyebrow at how close together they are in a line of empty beds.

The space is too cramped for this many people, most of it slapped together when Trevor and Alfredo were by themselves. He and Gavin managed to claim the good beds by going down for the count early, but even still the mattresses are thin and lumpy. Passable for not having been here long, but he and Gavin’s apartment back in the factory has spoiled him. Up there he didn’t have to deal with shitty beds or Jeremy and Geoff yelling about compasses two feet away from where he’s trying to fucking _sleep._

The house is loud but Gavin is quiet, his presence soothing. Even with all the yelling, Michael’s dropping off to sleep in minutes as exhaustion starts to filter out all the loud conversations. He barely feels the arm slung over him or the warm weight against his back before he drops off into dreams.  

 

\---

 

“Michael.”

It’s Lindsay--fuck, _it’s Lindsay._ He’s having trouble catching up to what’s around him, but suddenly the air is cold and he’s up on the roof and _Lindsay’s there._ He should be looking around for monsters, watching his own back, but all he can do is stare at her in stunned silence.

Something’s... _off_ about her. She’s staying back in the shadows that the tree is casting, fully grown now and looming above their heads. He feels like he can’t quite look at her directly, the lines of her body growing blurred the longer he tries. The world feels a little off balance, one misstep away from falling into nothing.

Michael doesn’t step forward, doesn’t wrap her up in his arms like the rational part of him is screaming at him to do, even if it’s just a dream. Because there’s another part of him, foggy and confused, that tells him something’s gone horribly, horribly wrong.

“Why are you--how are you _here?”_

“Something happened when I died--” she spits the words out in a rush, curling back behind the tree trunk. “I didn’t--I didn’t go to the next world. I got stuck in this...place--like the nether, but it’s all empty.” She sucks in a breath and it’s a horrible sound, wet like blood-filled lungs.

“Lindsay--” She steps out from behind the tree and the words die in his throat.

Her chest is ripped _apart._ Trevor had told him after she died that _at least it was quick._ With some of the monsters they encounter, _quick_ is the best that you can hope for. Her body had already been gone by the time he got there ( _too late to save her)_ but the blood had still been splattered all across the ground, soaking into the dirt.

Then the sight had made him sick. Now he just feels empty and distantly horrified, and when Lindsay steps all the way into the moonlight he has to fight not to jump back. He can see where claws ripped down her face, tearing apart the flesh of her cheek.

“It’s all empty,” she repeats, and sounds close to tears. “There’s no monsters, no plants, nothing’s alive there. Nothing, not even me.”

“I don’t--” The world’s spinning too fast. He’s going to lose his balance and fall off the roof, crash right into the dirt. Drown in the blood that Lindsay left there. When he sways to one side Lindsay darts forward, a hand out to catch him that comes just short of touching him.

“Whoah! Whoah, okay, sorry, I got a little too dramatic there, huh.” A hollow laugh. “I think I have a pass to freak out out a bit, I kind of am stuck in hell.”

“Does it hurt?” he manages to choke out. This close he can see how her body has gone slightly transparent, the moonlight filtering through her and the edges of her body fading out into the air. He can’t quite manage to look her in the eyes but he sees how she hesitates at the question, goes stiff, and he knows the answer is _yes._

“I can’t stay much longer,” she says instead. “Still trying to figure out how to properly haunt you.” She tries for a smile and Michael loves her for it.

“How do I fix this?” For all he knows, this is some crazy-vivid dream brought on by grief. But he can’t fight the instinct to want to make this ripped-apart ghost of Lindsay  _whole_ again, even if it’s all just made-up in his head.

“You’ve got to get through the end portal. Just get out of this world before we all get stuck in...wherever I am.” Michael blinks. It’s an obvious connection that he hadn’t made--they’d been planning on just dying whenever they died and meeting up again in the next world. But if Lindsay’s death got her stuck in some dimension hanging off of this world…

“If we go through it, will you get pulled through with us?” The question is already spilling out of his mouth before he can register the horrifying implication of it, if they can save themselves at the cost of Lindsay, stuck in an empty hell.

She opens her mouth to say something but no words come out. The world tilts alarmingly around them, the colors growing muted and the sounds of the night distant. He reaches out to grab onto Lindsay but her form flickers in and out, hand passing through her outstretched arm.

_“The portal,”_ her voice resonates in his head, “ _you’ve got to find the end portal.”_

 

\---

 

Michael wakes up in a lurch, already trying to leap to his feet before he even fully realizes he’s awake. His legs are tangled up with someone’s-- _Gavin’s,_ and it takes him a second of blind panic to thrash free. He’s drenched in sweat and gasping desperately for air.

There’s a chorus of annoyed groans at his thrashing but he’s already up and moving. He staggers past the beds and out into the night. _Lindsay, Lindsay was there._ The grass is cool under his bare feet but he barely feels it, stumbling backwards to look up at the roof.

The tree Gavin planted is massive, its trunk thick and its roots spilling down the walls of the house. A sick dread blooms in his gut as he looks up at it, stuck staring at the cold moonlight filtering through the branches. _Trees don’t grow like that without some kind of magic._

_Something’s gone horribly, horribly wrong._

“Michael!”

An arrow whistles past his ear and thuds into the front of the house. He freezes and then there’s hands on him, tugging him back into the safety of the house. There’s voices whispering furiously in his hear but his thoughts are scattered and rushing too quickly by for him to make out much more than _idiot_ and _trying to get yourself killed._ For a second he thinks he hears Lindsay murmuring his name but then the other voices get louder and he pushes past them, dropping back onto one of the beds and waving away their concern.

He doesn’t want to talk about it. He _should,_ but the world’s still spinning and the words feel heavy in his throat. So he screws his eyes shut and pretends to fall asleep. He even manages to keep still when Gavin grabs onto him too tight, arms wrapped around him like he can shield him from this world.

 

\---

 

“So I’ve only been in the jungle temple for a minute when suddenly there’s two fucking creepers!” Jeremy waves his arms in a vague miming of an explosion. He came back smudged and dirty but _alive,_ so outside of that Michael doesn’t really give a shit how many creepers he dealt with. Gavin’s listening with rapt interest, though, so he tries to be a good sport and pay attention too.

“And they fucking exploded my parrot! The one I’d just gotten to like me like two minutes before that!” Jeremy cries, and Gavin exclaims about how _terrible_ it is, and suddenly they’re both talking a mile a minute about foods that parrots like and why they think creepers are scared of cats and not birds, and it’s a little bit much for Michael to keep up with.

“You listening, boi?” Gavin pokes his cheek. “Jeremy wants to know if we want to go back to the jungle with him.” Michael blinks, tunes back in to realize that they’re both staring at him.

“You think the stronghold might be somewhere in there?” They both give him strange looks, but are decent enough not to comment on it after he mutters an apology. It had kind of just slipped out without meaning to. He keeps dancing around talking about finding the end portal without actually telling them  _why_ it’s so important this time. It’s never felt like the right time to mention it, and everyone’s been pretty cautious with their lives, so he keeps pushing it back.

He hasn’t been sleeping well the past few nights. His dreams are filled with snarled tree roots and burning, all-consuming fire and he never wakes up without dread sitting heavy against his chest. He knows the long nights show on his face and even more through how he talks with the others—half the time zoning out or mumbling whatever nonsense runs through his head and hopes it matches what he was asked. His focus is all over the place even in dangerous places like caves. Hell, yesterday he almost strolled right into a lava pit because he was wracking his brain over whether Gavin took the passage on the left or the right.

The others probably think he’s losing his shit. Michael’s pretty sure they’re not wrong.

_“You should go to the jungle.”_ The voice is sudden and jarring, but he doesn’t freak out like he did when it first started. He knows by now that no one else hears it. And _that’s_ why he’s pretty sure his reality is a little bit off center. There’s a little voice inside his head that sounds a hell of a lot like Lindsay. No dreams of her since that first horribly vivid one, just vague images of a shadow flickering in fire, but he’s pretty sure he’s getting followed around by her ghost.

He figures getting haunted by his dead wife is a pretty good reason to act kind of funny.

“I’ll go to the jungle with you guys.” They both light up and Michael offers a little smile back, both for them and for Lindsay’s excited shout of “ _hell yeah!”_ that echoes around his head.

 

\---

 

“ _You should try to tame some of those cats,”_ Lindsay tells him for the hundredth time.

“I still can’t believe you fucking brought me out here just so you could look at the feral cats,” Michael mutters, quiet enough that Gavin and Jeremy don’t hear up ahead. Jeremy’s leading them through the jungle and towards the temple he found earlier while Gavin tells him some story about an old ruin he and Michael found out in the desert worlds ago.

“ _I haven’t figured out how to follow the others around yet, so you have to be my free entertainment.”_ Neither of them have talked about it yet, but assuming the voice in his head is Lindsay and not him losing his fucking mind, she’s stuck in that horrible empty nether whenever she isn’t with Michael. “ _Besides,”_ she tells him before he can get too deep into that train of thought, “ _being dead might finally be enough to guilt trip you into letting us get a cat.”_

“Tell you what,” Michael murmurs, “If we both get out of this world without getting sucked into that shitty hell place, I’ll consider it.” He knows shit is getting desperate when he offers to let Lindsay get a cat, but it’s still worth it to hear her elated voice in his head.

Her excited noise gets cut off midway. He’s used to her running out of time by now but it still makes him falter, stumbling over his own feet. He already misses her, or what’s left of her, at least.

"You good back there, Michael?” Jeremy asks over his shoulder.

"Fuckin' peachy," Michael calls back, swatting at a bug that flies in his face. He picks up the pace a bit to catch up with the two of them now that he doesn't have to worry about them over-hearing his madman mutterings to Lindsay's ghost.

"I was telling Gavin this a second ago," Jeremy starts, pausing to hack at some stubborn briars in their path with his sword, "but Ryan might meet us out at the temple. He left earlier this morning, said he wanted to look at some of the carvings I found in there."

"So if someone jumps out and scares the shit out of us, don't go straight to stabbing. Got it."

"You might have to." Gavin stage-whispers, "Earlier I, ah, played a little prank on him and now I think he's out for my blood."

"Ryan's always out for your blood, boi. You probably deserve it this time, I might not stop him." He ignores Gavin's betrayed squawk--they both know Michael would protect him, even if Ryan's probably one of the least of their worries in this jungle. There could be a creeper behind any one of these trees, and not even Ryan can beat one of those fuckers’ explosions. Even still, Michael grips his sword a little bit tighter as they make their way through the trees, trying to shake the sense of dread that's settled on his shoulders.

 

\---

 

Michael is _beyond_ convinced that he is the only one in this group capable of understanding the concept of danger. Sure, he'll do dumb shit in worlds where he can respawn as much as he wants. But in a world like this he watches his step, doesn't take risks that he doesn't have to.

He certainly doesn't _forget_ about the time and lead them too deep into the jungle to make it back to their base by nightfall. He doesn't walk face-first into a pack of creepers only to have his ass saved by a scrawny ocelot that scampers by and scares the monsters off. And he _definitely_ does not slap together a shitty little treehouse to make camp in for the night when their chances are just as good on the ground.

He was stressed enough as it was, but now they’ve almost gotten exploded and they’re lost and the jungle fucking _sucks._ And to make it worse, Gavin is antagonizing Ryan.

They'd run into him earlier. Or rather, he'd found _them_ by following the sound of Michael yelling at Jeremy for getting them hopelessly lost in the fucking _jungle._ Michael's still not sure what Gavin did to him, but the other man had clearly been in some kind of mood. Now he's built his  _own_ tree house a stone’s throw away in his own Ryan-way of expressing displeasure. They're probably all going to get shot to shit by skeletons up here, so at first Michael had hardly cared about their little squabble, more worried about the very real threat of getting ripped apart by monsters.

Except what had started as Ryan and Gavin throwing jabs about the other's shoddy construction skills has somehow turned into letting fucking _arrows_ loose at each other, and Michael thinks he might scream. Fucking _morons._

He was _going_ to climb down and help Jeremy with monster control, but he's also gotta put a stop to the bullshit happening above his head. He can see Gavin perched up on top of a higher branch, wobbling after dodging out of the way of an arrow that flew a _bit_ too close. He rights himself after a terrifying second and has the nerve to fucking _laugh_ about it.

"I've got two creepers down here, Michael!" Jeremy calls from the ground. Michael's already halfway down the tree, sword slung across his back. He looks back up at Gavin, drawing back his own bow and making a face at Ryan. _He should stop this._

"Michael!" Jeremy snaps, followed by the dying hiss of one of the creepers. Michael glances up one last time, then starts picking his way down the branches, trying to ignore his racing heart. He'll help Jeremy with the monsters, then climb back up and put a stop to whatever Gavin and Ryan are doing before someone gets--

He hears a strangled cry, then branches snapping and a sick _thud_. Jeremy swears and he hears the final hiss of the other creeper, but nothing from Gavin, no spluttered shout or shocked laugh.

_No, no, no--_

For a second he's just frozen, white-knuckling the branches and letting his forehead fall against the trunk, paralyzed in the fear of what he might see if he looks down. Or what'll happen if he looks up, and Gavin's not there anymore--

"Michael, you need to get down here." Jeremy's voice is tight. Michael sucks in a shuddering breath. He's gotta face this. Now's not the time to shut down.

He climbs down the tree carefully, taking long, deep breaths to try and keep himself steady. One foot after another. Down to face whatever's waiting for him on the ground.

Gavin’s lying splayed out in the dirt, sightless eyes staring up at the jungle canopy. There’s an arrow lodged in his chest, right through the heart. Michael keeps waiting for him to sit up and laugh it off, say it’s all some elaborate prank. He doesn’t stir. Then the body’s fading out like they always do, there one instant and dissolving into air the next.

Michael’s frozen in the dying light. He can see Jeremy moving towards him, trying to turn him around to face him. Michael shrugs off the hand on his arm without really feeling it. He’s sure that behind the ringing in his ears there’s the shuffle of monsters, or the footsteps of the man that runs up to them.

_Ryan._

“Huh, I guess I really did hit him then.” Ryan’s voice filters in through the white noise in his mind. His voice is light and airy, but to Michael it’s as grating as steel against stone. Ryan killed Gavin. He _killed_ Gavin.

His hand closes around the handle of his sword. It feels like the arm pulling it out of its sheath isn’t his own, some puppetmaster pulling at his strings. But it’s  _fair,_ or at least he thinks so. This world is already stripped barren and empty, why not get some vengeance? It’s not like they haven’t done this before--some worlds end in them all slaughtering each other over petty arguments, only to laugh it off in the next world.

But then Ryan starts to back away, hands raised in defense, and something in Michael crumbles. He’s not going to attack someone who doesn’t want to fight back. And once that cold anger dissipates Michael’s just left...empty. He slides his sword back in place and lets his arm fall limp at his side. It’s too early even for grief. And it’s too late to take a swing at Ryan.

He just stands there numbly, watching Ryan’s mouth form words that are lost to him before he starts stepping backwards and retreats back into the jungle, vanishing into the tangle of trees. The sky has grown darker by now--the monsters will be out and well-hidden in the shadows of the canopy. Just because Michael couldn’t bring himself to do it doesn’t mean that for a second he doesn’t think of the poetic justice of a skeleton archer catching Ryan right between the ribs.

The fog in his brain starts to settle just in time for him to catch Jeremy’s eye when he shakes him by the arm a bit.

“You with me?” Jeremy’s voice is tight, too controlled to be normal. It hits Michael then that Jeremy’s fucking _furious._ He can see it in the hard set of his jaw and the glare he shoots at the space where Ryan disappeared into the trees.

“Yeah, yeah I’m with you.” His own voice sounds hollow and distant to his ears. He _wants_ to be useful, wants to help Jeremy get out of this jungle in one piece. But now he’s getting stuck on all the little moments he spent fucking around, chickening out before bringing up the end portal or putting off going to look for it. _What if they can’t get anybody out of this world once they’ve died?_

Twice he’s been too late. All he wants now is to get Jeremy back to camp, explain to everyone all the things he’s been hearing and seeing since Lindsay died, and try to convince them to help him find the end portal. All of this shit has shaken him up pretty badly, but this plan is solid, makes sense to his frazzled mind.

“We should go back.” It’s Jeremy who says it first. Michael nods and fumbles to light a torch. The breeze makes the flame sputter and jump erratically, but it’s a damn sight better than letting a creeper catch them by surprise.

The wavering torchlight casts dramatic shadows over Jeremy’s face. Michael finds himself fixated on them, staring blankly at them until Jeremy tugs at his arm. This time Michael doesn’t shrug him off, just stays silent and follows Jeremy through the jungle.

 

\---

 

The fact that they make it out of the jungle is pretty much all due to Jeremy. Michael’s job is to slash the shit out of things that want to kill them. It’s a good relief for the growing storm of unnamed emotions building in his chest. Jeremy just points at a lumbering shadow, or a bush with an odd sound coming from it, and Michael’s sword follows. Simple.

And Jeremy’s a surprisingly good navigator for someone who got them lost earlier. The trees begin to thin out, thick roots and mud giving way to a dirt path. In the distance he can make out the river they’d crossed coming in. Michael’s starting to think that maybe Jeremy was never lost after all, maybe just trying to give them a Lad’s night out in the jungle that they could all laugh about in the next world. He’d ask but Jeremy’s pissed and Gavin’s  _dead._ It’s just not the time.

He crashes into Jeremy’s back when the other man stops in his tracks. He’s lucky Michael didn’t accidentally skewer him.

Michael looks out past him right as Jeremy whispers, “ _Enderman.”_

He locks eyes with the monster across the river before he can process the warning. For a second his whole vision goes deep, swirling purple. _Fuck._ Then the enderman _roars,_ a terrible screech like wind howling through the trees that echoes in Michael’s ears like thunder. The torch falls from Jeremy's hands, sputtering out in the dirt and plunging them into darkness. _Oh shit._

He’s already leaping away from Jeremy when he hears the warp behind them, dark skeletal claws swiping at the air. Michael’s instincts take over as he swings his sword at its chest, only for the enderman to teleport out of the way right before it connects. The sword rushes through empty air and the wasted momentum knocks him off balance. The blade falls from his hands as he tries to right himself, spinning away into the dirt somewhere.

It’s probably not a good sign that the world spins for a second before he catches himself against a tree trunk. The lack of sleep these past few nights has done him no favors. The enderman is everywhere and nowhere--Michael hears it teleporting but every shadow seems to be a part of its body, reaching out to grab him but he can’t see the purple eyes anywhere--

Jeremy has time to scream his name before there’s a searing pain in his shoulder. _Oh shit, oh shit._ He can feel blood running down his chest and for a second the sudden pain makes him dizzy. Michael stumbles to the side as the enderman’s claws tear into the tree he was just leaning against. He can see Jeremy charging it, moonlight shining off of his sword, but endermen aren’t easily deterred from their targets until they’ve made their kill.

Endermen always freaked Gavin out--Michael couldn’t count how many times he’s had to dispose of them after Gavin looked one in the eyes on accident and sent it on a rampage. He kind of hates them too, after all the times he’s watched them sink their claws into Gavin, even in the worlds where he could brush that off with a laugh. Usually Michael’s better-rested and effectively immortal when he fights these things. Now he’s pretty sure he’s just fucked.

He wracks his adrenaline and pain-shocked mind for some kind of out as Jeremy holds the enderman back, yelling something that Michael doesn’t catch. Every monster has some kind of weakness to them. The undead burn in sunlight. Creepers are afraid of cats. _And endermen hate water._

Michael takes one last glance at the enderman before taking off in a dead sprint for the river. His foot sinks too deep into the sand and he trips over himself, splashing in facefirst. For a second there’s no up or down, only freezing cold water stinging against the wound on his shoulder and choking him when he gets a mouthful of it. His clothes and boots weigh him down and he starts to sink, thrashing desperately until he’s looking up at the surface again, tired legs starting to kick upward on instinct.

There’s a flash of purple on the bank and Michael freezes--starting to sink again. The enderman is right there, _inches_ away with its purple eyes blazing, mouth open in a scream distorted by the water. It sticks its bony hand down into the water and Michael screws his eyes shut, bracing for the pain.

His lungs burn and he thinks it’s finally got him, but no more of his blood seeps out into the water and he manages to get an eye open in time to see it falling into dust, the water washing what’s left of its body away. It was so focused on killing him that it let itself get destroyed by the water. _It’s dead._

Michael’s been underwater too long. He didn’t get a chance to take a breath before falling in and the effort to stay afloat against the cold and the pain in his shoulder has exhausted him. He should use the last of his energy to get above the surface--Jeremy will help pull him out and he’ll be fine.

But the surface is getting further away, the water getting darker around him. How sure is he that Lindsay’s ghost was real? Maybe if he stays down here he’ll find out.

His eyes shut again. His chest feels like it’s burning from the inside out, but even that starts to fade away. Then there’s a muted splash in the water. Even this far down he feels it. Something’s coming towards him, but as his back settles against the clay of the riverbed he doesn’t find himself caring all that much.

“ _Keep fighting, Michael.”_ It’s Alfredo’s voice echoing in his head, just like Lindsay’s did, and the first thought his oxygen-starved brain can manage is, _since when is Alfredo dead?_ Then hands are gripping the front of his shirt, tugging him upward and moving to wrap around his chest. Moving hurts, but so does everything else.

“ _Swim, Michael!”_ This time it’s Gavin, and the shock alone of hearing his voice is enough for Michael to try at a half-hearted kick upwards. He wants to see Gavin again, desperately, but not like this. He tries to kick again, barely stirring the water. Whoever’s dragging him is doing all of the work anyway, and even though the seconds feel like hours they still manage to break the surface.

Even above water he can’t breathe, and Michael panics, choking on something in his throat. He’s rolled over onto his side and something thumps against his back. Suddenly he’s hacking up what feels like the whole damn _river,_ but in between the heaves he manages to draw in sweet, sweet _air._

“Cut it a little closer, Michael--Jesus _Christ.”_ Michael opens his eyes to see Jeremy leaning over him, soaking wet and brows furrowed. For the moment Michael is focused on getting as much air in his lungs as possible more than answering, so he nods like that can convey an _I’m sorry_ and a _thank you for saving me_ all at once. He can feel Lindsay’s presence somewhere in the back of his head, along with two others that he assumes are Gavin and Alfredo. It’s a regular ghost _party_ now, except for the part where Lindsay is almost certainly pissed with him for this almost-drowning stunt. And that at least three members of their group are dead already.

_“I would yell at you, but we don’t have time and it technically wasn’t your fault. And because you’re probably in shock.”_ And there’s Lindsay. It’s such a relief to hear her voice that he doesn’t even mind that she’s angry.

“I’m not in shock,” he mumbles, half-forgetting that Jeremy’s there.

“The fact that you have to remind me doesn’t reassure me, buddy.” Jeremy’s staring at the spot on Michael’s shoulder that feels like it’s been turned inside out. He cranes his neck, trying to get a good look at it, but pretty much his entire fucking body resists that movement. Seriously, _fuck_ endermen.

_“Michael, you really need to get up. We think we know where the end portal is. I know it sucks, but--”_ Lindsay’s voice gets cut off by a sudden... _something._ It feels like how the enderman’s scream sounded, a sudden, screaming hollowness.

_“What the fuck?!”_ It’s Geoff. Michael winces at the feeling of his spirit crowding into his brain and at the fact that, _shit, almost half of us are gone._ At least Jeremy seems to buy the wince as a normal reaction to getting shredded by an enderman’s claws. Right now Michael’s soaked in freezing cold water and bleeding and _really_ not quite ready for the “our friends are ghosts and they won’t shut up” conversation.

“I’m gonna go build a fire, sit tight.” Michael remembers at once that he’s not the only one soaking wet and freezing, and Jeremy ended up like that after saving _him._ He props himself up on his elbows, half-waiting for one of the ghosts to tell him what to do, but they’re probably still explaining everything to Geoff. Michael barely buys all of it and he had it carefully explained while he was _alive,_ so the whole thing must be pretty overwhelming post-mortem.

Down in the river with death so close he doubted everything about Lindsay’s ghost for the millionth time. He should’ve known as soon as that fucking tree grew, because magic _had_ to have been involved. But it’s hard to believe in something like that, especially after all the debates he and Lindsay have had on what comes after a real, permanent death. (And when it means believing your wife’s soul is trapped and _in pain.)_ But _four_ ghosts are hard to argue with, especially when he didn’t even see Geoff or Alfredo die.

Lindsay got her absolute, definitive proof that ghosts are real. He just wishes it didn’t come at the cost of four lives, potentially permanent losses if Michael doesn’t get his shit together.

He manages to prop himself up onto his elbows, then grits his teeth and forces himself up in a quick, painful heave. He can hear Jeremy getting firewood up at the treeline, but no growls or hisses of monsters, so he gives himself a second to take stock of himself. It’s been a bit too long since he last had something to eat or drink, and he isn’t doing too great in the sleep department either. It’s the wound from the enderman he’s mostly worried about, though. One of its claws got him in a deep, diagonal swipe, digging into his shoulder and across his chest. Even in the dark he can see that it’s not just water soaking his shirt.

_“Wow, you really look like shit!”_ Fucking Gavin doesn’t have room to talk, he _died_ in a dumb pissing contest with Ryan.

“Oh how I missed your encouraging words,” Michael mumbles, shooting a glance over his shoulder at Jeremy. The other man cheers as the flint and steel sparks and catches. The fire is small but growing, and Michael’s willing to push past pain and exhaustion and _everything_ to manage those few feet if it means getting warm.

He staggers over to the fire, sinking heavily to the dirt as close to the fire as he can without getting singed. He is completely, unbelievably, _done_ with this world. If the next one is anything like this, he flat out refuses to be the one to have to fix it. Maybe he’ll make fucking _Ryan_ do it after the stunt he pulled with Gavin.

Michael’s so distracted thinking about all the fun he could have haunting Ryan that he doesn’t notice Jeremy’s gone down to the river until he’s coming back up with two full waterskins in his hands. He passes one to Michael, who drinks greedily from it.

“Normally I’d boil it first, but this world is enough of a shitshow that I think bacteria is the least of our worries.” Michael raises a toast with his waterskin to that. “That cut’s gonna kill you first, anyway.” Jeremy waves towards his shoulder. He’s smiling, but Michael can see the tight pinch of worry around his eyes.

“Not if I drown again before that can happen.” Michael’s attempt at humor falls stupidly flat as Jeremy’s mouth twists into a frown. Okay, no drowning jokes minutes after Jeremy had to drag his dumb ass out of the water, then.

“I’ll be fine,” Michael adds, not sure who he’s trying to reassure. “At this point I just want to find the end portal and get the fuck out of this mess.” Jeremy’s fiddling through his pack with intent, but his brows still furrow at that.

“Why bother? The tower’s already up, all we have to do now is die.” Jeremy shrugs, then pulls a small roll of bandages out with a cheer. “But if we’re gonna do that,” he continues, “we might as well do it blaze-of-glory style. No good having you bleed to death before that can happen.”

Jeremy scoots over to Michael’s side of the fire, leaning in to squint at the gash left by the enderman. “It’s not going to be pretty, but I can at least wrap it up before it gets too gnarly.” He sets about exactly that with impressively steady hands for it being the middle of the night and with both of them half-drowned. (Michael maybe a little more than half.) Michael does his best to keep his grimaces and winces to a minimum all while watching the treeline to make sure no monsters are coming for them. He hears a few moans and hisses further off in the jungle, but nothing steers too close.

 

\---

 

Jeremy’s a bit of a saint for being willing to carry on a conversation once he sees Michael starting to space out. He talks about the secret room he caught Trevor and Alfredo tunneling out under the house as he finishes bandaging him, then stays next to him and keeps watch while telling some story from a world where he was on his own on a tiny island. Michael really tries to keep track of the story, but it’s getting more difficult as the ghosts in his head start chatting.

_“I still can’t believe you carked it over a tiny little undead!”_ Gavin laughs, the sound kind of weird and echoey in Michael’s head.

_“You don’t even get to fucking_ talk. _How many times have you let Ryan kill you by now? You might as well just--”_ Geoff spits, and Michael gets the feeling this argument has already happened once or twice in the nether.

_“Boys, please. You have an eternity to fight over this if Michael fucks up getting to the end portal.”_ Lindsay’s voice comes through clearer than the others. Maybe because she’s been dead the longest. Maybe because she’s Lindsay.

_“What she said!”_ Alfredo chimes in.

_“See, this is why Alfredo is my favorite.”_ Michael’s a little bit offended by that, but he lets it slide on account of everyone is fucking dying because he doesn’t have his shit together.

_“You’re also my favorite, Michael,”_ Lindsay adds like she can read his mind. Hell, maybe she fucking  _can. “And we can put Gavin under consideration for second favorite, provided we all get out of hell.”_

_“I’m feeling very left out,”_ Geoff whines, though his mostly monotone delivery isn’t very convincing.

_“Speaking of hell,”_ Lindsay barrels on, _“We think we’ve got a lock on where the end portal is. We can’t stray too far away from you before we get pulled back into the nether, but we can kind of feel it...tugging? We’re pretty sure it’s in the jungle, and a guess is our best bet. It’s better than waiting for you to get a bunch of ender eyes together and finding it yourself, at least, considering how the mighty Mogar did after_ one _e_ _nderman fight.”_

Michael has to bite his lip to stop himself from responding to that out loud. The  _Mighty Mogar_ is going to kick complete _ass_ in the next world, this one just fucking sucks and shouldn’t go on his permanent record. He’s totally lost wherever Jeremy’s at in his story, but apparently the scowl on Michael’s face does _not_ match the tone Jeremy’s going for.

“You good? Shoulder getting worse?”

Michael shakes his head. “I’m fine. Thinking about heading back to the jungle, I think.” Smooth, Michael. Really sounding like a rational human being over here.

“Well that’s a fucking terrible idea,” Jeremy says with a shocked laugh. The worst part is that Jeremy’s _really_ not wrong, but Michael’s not sure how to make the case that he really needs to go follow ghosts around in the middle of the night.

“Listen, I don’t know how good you are to travel, but the only place I’m willing to risk it for is our base, and even that would be dangerous. I’m _definitely_ not sending you back to the jungle, especially after…” Especially after _Gavin._ Jeremy might as well have just _said_ it, because Michael’s brain helpfully offers the sight of Gavin’s body sprawled out and bleeding on the ground anyway. But he’s _fine,_ Michael reminds himself, _or at least he is for now._ He can feel Gavin’s ghost near him, and that’s better than nothing. More than enough to fight for.

“Jeremy…” Michael has to stop to clear his throat, not sure what’s blocking the words from coming out. “There’s something really, really _wrong_ with this world. You can feel it, right?” _Please, tell me I don’t have to fix all of this by myself._

“If you’re trying to tell me this world sucks, I already knew  _that._ Not respawning is always a bitch. I know we were trying to make this world work, but it’s probably time to let loose and then try again in the next world. ‘Cause it does feel pretty creepy here, and Ryan’s already popped the cherry on murdering each other. And he kind of deserves it after the shit he did to Gavin, right?”

There’s this _instant_ in all the worlds that end in chaos. When _Are we doing this?_ shifts to _Hell yeah_ and everything falls into TNT and swords and laughter. In the last world, that moment was when the wrong switch flipped and they saw their lives in the factory counting down by seconds.

Michael sees it now, the firelight lighting up Jeremy’s crooked smile. He’d be smiling too, if it weren’t for the ghosts murmuring in the back of his head.

“Jeremy...whatever you’re thinking about is an _awful_ idea.” The other man just laughs, waving a hand.

“Says the guy who wants to go die in the jungle.” Michael opens his mouth to say something, _anything_ to convince Jeremy that something isn’t _right,_ but then all around his head is a shout from four mouths of--

_“Creeper!”_

Michael throws his good arm around Jeremy and _tugs,_ desperately trying to pull them away from the incoming blast. They crash backwards into the dirt, Jeremy landing on top of him with a grunt. An elbow digs into the middle of Michael’s bandages and the whole world goes white and distant.

_Boom._

For a second Michael’s weightless--everything spinning and bright. Then he’s opening his eyes to Jeremy staring down at him for the second time tonight. Jeremy says something that gets lost to the ringing in Michael’s ears. His shoulder is _screaming_ with pain, but everything else moves alright when he hauls himself mostly upright. Jeremy has to steady Michael when he sits up and lists to the side a bit. But Michael’s doing great, he’s fucking _fine._

He opens his mouth to tell Jeremy exactly that when an arrow shoots past them. His hearing filters back in time to hear Jeremy swear, a thin red line starting to spread on his sleeve.

Jeremy hauls Michael roughly to his feet. Michael has no idea where the hell his sword went but Jeremy’s fumbling with a small sheath strapped to his thigh that Michael’s never fucking noticed before. His eyes are darting around everywhere in the dark--where the fire used to be is a deep, jagged crater. He can make out the white bone of a skeleton archer coming through the trees, hears a drawn out moan of another undead. Then another arrow he feels the wind off of, more moans and clicks and hisses that promise death.

Jeremy presses a knife into Michael’s hand. It’s iron and wickedly sharp, reminding Michael a bit too much of the sacrificial dagger Jeremy was obsessed with back in the factory.

“Run,” Jeremy orders. “I’ll hold them back, just fucking _run.”_ Then Jeremy takes off for a glint of metal on the ground, hefting the fallen sword up and settling into a warrior’s stance the next instant. Michael’s ghosts are silent and the monsters are so _loud._

So Michael turns toward the jungle and _runs._

 

\---

 

The sounds are coming from the left so he darts towards the right, branches scratching up against his face and arrows whistling past him. He has no fucking idea where he’s going as the trees rush past.

_Boom. Boom._

The first explosion is distant, the second just close enough for him to feel the heat off of it. He stumbles as blasted wood chips shoot past him. Of fucking _course_ the creepers won’t give him room to breathe. He runs without direction, creepers detonating with what feels like every goddamn second. There must be some kind of dungeon nearby, that or the entire fucking world is trying to come down on him. His lungs burn with each heaving breath, his shirt soaking with blood with every heartbeat--

A panicked shout echoes around his head and he staggers, foot catching a root that sends him to the ground. He hears the building hiss a second too late and he squeezes his eyes shut, bracing for the pain--

The world is very loud and then completely quiet--everything reduced to a dull ringing. His whole body aches but he can move his fingers and toes, so he's at least more or less intact. Step two is to flip over onto his back. No easy feat after being exploded twice in one fucking night. He manages it, barely. One of his arms lights up in pain and the whole motion leaves him embarrassingly out of breath. He smells something burning and turns his head towards the smoking mess that’s left of a tree. _Well, better the goddamn tree than me._

_“Where am I?”_

It’s jarring to hear something in his head when the world’s still muffled and ringing around him. But what gets him is that it’s _Jack’s voice,_ and Michael’s heart sinks. That’s _five_ of them dead now, and he still has no idea how he’s going to _(if_ he’s going to) get to the end portal. He couldn’t even manage to tell _one_ fucking person about the ghosts and the portal, and now everything rests on him. A half-dead idiot laying in the dirt.

_“We’ll talk to Jack,”_ Lindsay tells him, then. _“But if you don’t get up and moving right now, you’re going to die.”_ She’s right. Michael hates when that happens.

“Got it,” he says, or tries to. It comes out weaker than he thought it would, muffled to his still-ringing ears. To add insult to injury, it takes a Herculean effort and a lot of pain to go from on his back to standing, leaning against a surviving tree for support. It’s even more embarrassing now that he has an audience of ghosts again.

_“We’re getting stronger,”_ Lindsay says, her voice as clear as if she was standing next to him. _“Alfredo figured out how to follow Trevor around, but he can’t talk to him. Gavin’s wandered off a bit to see what monsters are around you. And Geoff’s still explaining everything to Jack in the nether, but we’re gonna try to get one of them on Ryan, he’s a bit of a loose cannon right now.”_

“Any word on Jeremy?”

_“Well he’s not here with us, but that’s all I’ve got for you.”_ Michael nods. He’s not sure which he’s more worried about--the monsters murdering Jeremy or Jeremy murdering everyone else, thinking this world is just like all the others. God knows Ryan wouldn’t need much convincing to go with a bloody end like that, either. The two of them could make their own apocalypse.

He blinks when he thinks he sees a quick flash of a transparent arm, and then Gavin’s voice is back. _“There’s two skeletons off to the left of you, but they’re busy shooting at each other right now.”_ he reports.

“Gee, do they remind you of anyone?”

Gavin makes a face. And then Michael almost fucking screams, because _he can see Gavin making a face._ It takes a concerted effort to look him right in his blank eyes, not straying towards the deep wound right over his heart. It takes so much focus that he has no brain power left for words, just staring up at Gavin’s ghost with his mouth hanging open like a fucking fish on land.

_“You can see me!”_ And _oh god_ is it trippy to watch Gavin’s mouth move but have the words sound in his brain. Gavin’s grin isn’t any weaker even in death, wide and bright in the middle of this shit. Michael hates that he let anyone who smiles at him like that die on his watch, but he’s not going to fuck this up twice.

Lindsay flickers back into view and Michael jumps a mile, startling a laugh out of her. She looks at Gavin. _“Oh my god, can he_ see _us?”_ Turning back to Michael she asks, _“Quick, how many fingers am I holding up?”_ She offers him twin middle fingers, a gesture he automatically returns.

Then both ghosts blink out of sight as suddenly as they appeared, the jungle dark and empty again. For the first time their disappearance sends a bolt of fear through him, because _what if something went wrong, what if they can’t come back, what if--_

_“I don’t think we can keep that party trick up for long!”_ Lindsay’s voice, the most bright and cheerful he’s heard it in a while, sets him at ease again. He still looks between the trees and squints, hoping to get a look at either of their faces again.

“A little warning next time,” he grumbles, trying his best to sound like even seeing their _ghosts_ was enough to make him feel a bit less hopeless. He wants nothing more than to see them alive and whole, though, so he forces himself to get back to business.

“You said you could feel the portal...tugging?”

_“Yeah, keep walking the way you’re facing! We’ll guide you and try to keep an eye out for monsters for ya, but try to hurry? It’s kind of life or death. Or life and trying to make death not a thing again.”_

_“What Lindsay’s trying to say is that the nether is_ awful.” Gavin offers, _“So get through the portal already so we can see you properly on the other side!”_

_“You can do this, babe.”_ Lindsay says, and for a second Michael swears he sees a ghostly hand reach out and pinch his cheek.

It’s the first time Michael’s smiled all day.

 

\---

 

The jungle is really fucking creepy at night. Once his hearing re-orients itself after all of the explosions, he’s treated to a _lovely_ array of ocelots yowling, undead moaning and ripping each other to shreds, and the occasional Enderman’s gurgle that has his him locking his gaze to the dirt beneath his feet. He’s pretty sure he’s not going to survive a second tussle with one when all he has is the dagger from Jeremy that he white-knuckles while he walks.

Alone, it would all be unbearable. Hell, even with ghostly company whispering directions and warnings in his head he can barely manage it. Every step feels like a mile, his thoughts sluggish and constantly getting pulled back to focusing on all his aches and pains, big and small. His fucking _everything_ hurts.

_“Jeremy made it back to base,”_ Alfredo says after a long stretch of silence. _“He looks kind of hurt, but better off than you, at least.”_ Objectively Michael knew Jeremy was at least mostly fine since his ghost never showed up, but it’s still a relief to know he made it somewhere safe in one piece.

“How’s Trevor taking it? For all he knew we fucked off to the jungle and died.” Michael lowers his voice to a whisper as he spots an undead shambling past a ways away, loosening his grip on the knife a fraction when he passes by unnoticed.

_“Not sure. I think he saw me for a second or something because he kindaaa freaked out. He’s hiding in the house right now, I wandered away from him.”_

“If he starts being able to see you, try to charades your way into telling him what’s going on. Or test if you can talk to him yet.”

_“Yeah, yeah--Oh, shit. I think Ryan got back. This’ll be fun.”_

“Keep me posted,” Michael says to empty air as Alfredo’s presence fades away again. He’s not sure where Gavin and Lindsay are, maybe trailing that undead or recharging their ghostly _whatever_ in the nether, but if he doesn’t trust they’ll come back then he’ll go crazy.

_“Creeper up ahead, go ahead and hang a right. The portal’s started tugging from that direction too.”_ Lindsay’s face appears for a second to speak again, but she doesn’t push her luck and fades away a second after. The few glimpses he gets are more than enough for now, anyway. He’s been walking for what feels like years, and his legs are starting to drag with every step, his head spinning when he turns too quickly. His stamina is virtually nothing by now.

_“Jeremy and Ryan are arguing now,”_ Alfredo reports. _“They have swords out and it kind of looks like they’re messing around, but Jeremy also looks kinda pissed and Ryan did the creepy laugh thing.” Shit._ Michael doesn’t have time to freak out about whatever those two are about to do, because there’s a flash of unnatural green between the trees. If two creeper explosions haven’t killed him, a third one definitely will.

Michael ducks lower, letting bushes conceal him as he sneaks forward, his breath sounding too loud to his own ears. Whether or not he can run is a question he hopes he won’t need to find out the answer to.

_“He’s going to kill him.”_

Michael freezes. He doesn’t know who’s meant to be killing who, but Alfredo’s voice had been tight and serious. They’re going to waste their lives, and all Michael can do is sit tight and quietly wait for updates. He fucking _hates_ it.

He holds his breath as the creeper passes by. It’s not quite gone yet if the near-silent rustles of the underbrush are to be believed, but being behind it is a damn sight better than just praying it won’t spot him.

_“Now I see why Michael was so upset about me killing people.”_

_“Gavin hardly counts as people,”_ Geoff’s saying, but Michael barely recognizes it beneath the anger of _that was Ryan’s voice, now fucking Ryan’s dead too and for no good fucking reason._

He has to bite down hard on his lip to keep in the angry scream. He tastes blood and screws his eyes shut, trying to take deep breaths so he doesn’t fucking _erupt_ at Ryan, at all of them, because it’s been an _awful_ day and he’s _so done_ with everyone around him dying.

_“What can I do as a ghost?”_ Ryan’s asking, _“Pop out and say boo?”_ He must figure something out, because as Michael’s dragging himself back into a standing position, a translucent Ryan appears before him. He’s got two deep slash marks carved through his chest--Alfredo wasn’t kidding when he said Jeremy looked pissed.

He doesn’t have _time_ to stand around and stare Ryan, though. Michael’s already pissed and doesn’t feel like having a go at a shouting match with Ryan, so he marches forward and discovers that, yes, he can walk right through him like mist.

Ryan reforms next to him, frowning. Michael just tightens his hold on Jeremy’s knife and keeps walking. If the creeper notices the movement or the softly glowing ghost next to him Michael’s _fucked,_ but he needs to get to the portal so on he marches, steadfastly not looking at Ryan. If his ghost is anything like Lindsay’s or Gavin’s, he only has a minute or two of visibility left.

_“I really do feel kind of bad.”_ Michael falters for a second but keeps walking, hacking at the thickening brush with the knife every few steps. _“I assume you already knew something was wrong with this world when Gavin died, judging by your reaction. You’d been acting strangely before that anyway, I should’ve asked you what was going on.”_ Ryan’s form flickers, and vanishes. _“I’m sorry.”_

Michael sighs. “It’s fine. Nothing we can do about it now, anyway,” he says, keeping his voice low in case there’s any more monsters around. He’s still angry as shit, but he feels that anger start to give way a bit. He’s mostly just pissed at this world itself, now, and all the things it’s trying to take from him.

He’ll show this world, though. He’ll get everyone out of here.

 

\---

 

The ghosts lead him deeper into the jungle, their directions and voices getting clearer as they bring him closer to the portal. Lindsay had told him that it was somewhere below ground but she couldn’t get far enough out to check. Michael’s just hoping for two things: that he doesn’t have to dig through the fucking dirt to get there, and that the two idiots back at base stay out of trouble long enough for him to pull them out of here.

Of course this world would never grant him a wish that simple. The sky’s starting to lighten, and Michael had hoped that that paired with the relative safety of the base would be enough to keep Trevor and Jeremy out of trouble. But, apparently--

“They’re building a _what.”_ It’s not even a question, because Michael knows not to doubt their stupidity by now.

_“A giant tower up into the sky,”_ Alfredo supplies. _“I tried telling Trevor to at_ least _go out with a bang in our secret room, but he either wasn’t listening or couldn’t hear me.”_ Michael pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs before he keeps walking. The sun will rise or it won’t. These fucking dumbasses will die or they won’t. It’s _fine._

_“Undead to the left,”_ Gavin chimes in. _“Aw, nevermind, it smacked its head on a tree and fell over. It’ll burn soon anyway, already starting to look a little crispy.”_

Michael has to stop to hack at a thick cluster of vines blocking his way, gritting his teeth as the muscles in his arm (hell, his entire _body)_ tell him to fuck off and die at the exertion. Just a little further, he tells himself for the millionth time. Then he can sleep for a hundred years in the next world.

_“Brace yourself,”_ Alfredo says as Michael finally breaks through the thicket of vines, stumbling forward into a grassy clearing.

_“Oh_ shit _!”_ Trevor and Jeremy yell in tandem, their ghosts crowding in with the others. Michael barely reacts, but he’s inclined to agree with them. Because looming up above him, casting long shadows in the morning light, are the crumbling stone walls of the jungle temple.

 

\---

 

_It was right here this whole time._ He should’ve known--it was the only sign of former life in this world, and all those weird fucking carvings Jeremy mentioned.... _At least this means he won’t have to go through a cave or anything,_ is his first thought, quickly followed by an onslaught of memories of he and Gavin fucking around in old temples like this and getting fucked up by all the traps inside of them. He can feel all the ghosts hovering behind his back, and dying in front of an audience of eight souls would be humiliating enough without the added kick of condemning them all to an eternity in this shitty nether.

“Jeremy, did you see anything weird when you explored in here?”

_“The creeper that got my parrot fucked up the wall--there was a bunch of weird machinery from what I could see, so there’s definitely traps. Some of the carvings were creepy as shit. I left pretty quickly and didn’t even touch the lower level.”_

_“Well the portal’s definitely underground,”_ Lindsay says, _“So check there first.”_

“You got it.” Michael ignores how his voice doesn’t come out half as confident as he was shooting for. The early light does little to soften the blank stone walls, snarled in moss and probably packed with a dozen things that could kill him.

The entryway must have been covered in vines, but Michael can see where Jeremy hacked away at them, pieces of vine litter the stone floor and are just now starting to dry out. He leans in hesitantly, waiting for his eyes to adjust. There’s an empty stone room with what looks like a hallway on the far side, the edge of what looks like a blasted wall barely visible.

_“I’m going to go check out that machinery that Jeremy mentioned, see if I can’t figure out what traps it’s connected to.”_ Ryan says. Then follows a quick squabble that seems to take place half in the nether and half around Michael, about who’s on trap checking duty and who’s looking out for mobs. He hovers in the doorway, worrying his lip.

_“We don’t have all day, Michael,”_ Gavin’s smiling face says, fading away again as soon as he appears. Michael rolls his eyes and is rewarded with a small, fond laugh. It’s the push he needs.

He steps into the jungle temple and is immediately greeted by a medley of voices shouting _“Duck!”_ Michael drops to a crouch just as an arrow speeds through the space where his head used to be, clattering against the stone wall. Jesus fucking _Christ._

This low to the ground, he can see the thin tripwire snapped in half laying in the doorway. “Jeremy, how the fuck did you not trigger that when you were in here?” He waits for a second, but there’s no answer. He must be one of the ghosts on trap duty, then, for all the good it’s done Michael so far. He knows he should be paying better attention instead of just relying on the ghosts, but his head is swimming with exhaustion and even this close the portal feels a hundred miles away.

Michael squints in the dark, checking for any more wires near the ground or strung up high before standing back up. He watches his step as he walks, avoiding any stones that look funny. Dozens of worlds back he and Gavin blew themselves sky high in a desert temple when they walked too quickly over a mosaic in the floor. He doesn’t want a repeat incident of that.Then he can’t stop thinking about how the air here is thick and humid, unpleasantly reminding him of the idea that there could be poisonous gas traps in here, too. Then there’s monsters to think about, too, and all the different kinds of undead that could have lurked in here for centuries without needing food or water--

It takes him ten fucking minutes just to cross the first room, but it’s better than being dead. The hallway stretching before him is long, dark, and most concerningly, has a giant fucking hole in the middle of it. Through the crater in the left wall he can see Jack’s ghost pointing at something while Ryan’s ghost leans in. Jack fades out, but not before giving Michael a cheerful wave.

_“Don’t come much closer, we can’t tell how stable the floor is.”_ the man says. _“As far as the traps go, there’s only three in this hallway and they all lead to dispensers. Judging by the first one you triggered, they’re probably just full of arrows.”_

“Thanks.” Now that Jack’s pointed it out, the light filtering in through small holes in the walls is enough to illuminate a trip wire at eye level a few feet away from him. He can see the beginnings of the carvings, too. Down the hall to his right stretches roaring flames carved into the rock, complete with what look disturbingly like writhing figures engulfed in the fire. The sooner he’s out of this place, the better.

_“You might be able to jump the hole in the floor, but other than that I don’t see another way to get to the stairs. The lower level is pretty dark but from what I can tell it’s definitely what we’re looking for. Whole thing is covered in creepy fucking carvings.”_

Michael nods, picking his way through the hallway. He ducks under the first tripwire, noting the tiny arrow slit buried in a carved wall of flames. He stops a foot out from the hole in the floor, leaning forward a bit to stare down into the dark pit. Vines are reaching down to the lower level, but he can’t see far down they reach. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually have the strength left to make the jump before him, but he starts to size it up anyway.

_Crack._

Ghostly hands reach out to grab him but pass through him like smoke. Then the floor is crumbling away and Michael’s _falling,_ hard and fast. There’s warm air rushing past his face, a cloud of dust as the stone crumbles, and then nothing at all.

 

\---

 

Michael can’t breathe. He’s coughing, and coughing, but all that’s coming out is dust and he can’t get anything _in,_ face buried against the floor. He manages to pick his head up and turn it to the side, finally getting in a decent inhale even though his windpipe still feels vaguely crushed.

It’s dark as night, but when his eyes finally adjust, he sees that he’s lying on his stomach in a twisted pile of dark vines. They’re probably the reason he woke up from that fall at all instead of opening his eyes to the nether, but with the waves of pain coursing through his body he’s not feeling very grateful at all. His chest aches with every breath, and the wound on his shoulder is bleeding again. _This world has really been putting him through the goddamn ringer, huh._

He’s become very practiced at dragging himself back to his feet, even when his body is telling him to lie back down in the vines and let the temple collapse around him. He finds Jeremy’s dagger with a bit of help from the ghosts, twisted up in some thick vines. At this point, Michael’s just counting himself lucky that he didn’t land heart-first on it.

There’s nowhere to go but forward, so Michael stumbles out of the pile of vines and starts following the carvings. Some of them are motifs he’s seen before--a great, roaring dragon or a humanoid monster with glowing eyes. But infinitely more concerning are the _hordes_ of undead carved into the walls, some ripping villagers limb from limb and others desperately trying to drag themselves out of an all-consuming fire. They lead him away from the hole in ceiling and down towards a small, dark hallway. None of the ghosts have reported seeing any tripwires or arrow slits, so Michael hesitantly presses onwards.

Michael turns the corner into the hallway, and is face-to-face with a creeper. His blood runs so cold it freezes him, staring dumbly forward as the creeper starts to hiss and expand. Then his arm is moving before his brain can even wake up, burying the knife in the creeper’s head and dragging it desperately across its face, gunpowder weeping from the wound.

The creeper’s hiss fades to silence as its body crumbles into gunpowder, leaving Michael with a thundering heartbeat and the realization that he’s been holding his breath.

_“Michael, boi, I’m so sorry, I didn’t--I was supposed to watch for monsters while the others looked for the stronghold entrance but I--”_ Gavin’s voice bursts into his head with a frantic rush.

“It’s fine, Gav.” His voice comes out a strangled whisper. Michael blinks furiously, trying  to banish the creeper’s face, swelling with an incoming explosion, from his memory. “I’m okay, don’t worry,” he tacks on when he can practically _feel_ Gavin’s radiating panic, even though his own voice still isn’t quite steady.

He runs a slightly shaking hand along the wall as he walks down the hallway, fingertips running over the grooves of carved undead. He wonders who built this temple, and where they are now. If they’re trapped in the nether they’re well-hidden--Lindsay had said that the whole place was completely empty. They did build this whole place over the end portal, though. Maybe one day they finally jumped through it like Michael’s about to.

The hallway opens up to a small stone chamber. The opposite wall is filled with intricate carvings--a dragon’s flame moving in a spiral, the entire world being engulfed beneath it. If the temple hadn’t checked the “obsessed with fire and the end” box yet, this complex carving does it. At the center of the burning world is a small, round hole. The torchlight casts eerie shadows over the whole thing, and then suddenly all he can think is _what the fuck, what the fuck,_ because there are two torches burning bright on either side of it, flames bright and steady.

“Did...did any of you light those torches? Can you guys even do that?”

_“That wasn’t us,”_ Lindsay says, _“They were like that when I came over to check this room out.”_

“Awesome, even _more_ ghosts then.”

_“Or magic,”_ Ryan offers, which makes Michael groan. Traps he can dodge, or at least die trying to. _Magic_ he can’t do shit about, and it’s what got them into this mess in the first place. Back in the factory, the air crawled with this stuff. Hell, Michael had even dabbled with it himself. He feels it in the air now, like static electricity buzzing on his skin. He’s getting closer.

As he steps further into the room, he spots a pedestal against the far left wall, half-shrouded in shadows. Resting on a dusty cushion is a glassy, green ender pearl. Michael cautiously walks over and stares down at it, then at the small hole in the center in the center of the carving.

_God_ damn _it._

“If I pick up this pearl, are any traps gonna shoot at me?” He leans down to look himself while he waits for the ghosts’ consensus, checking for any thin wires or a weird look to the floor beneath the pedestal.

_“You’re probably fine,”_ Ryan tells him, _“We can’t go through the floors or walls to_ really _check, but I doubt the builders of this temple would risk having anything like TNT in a room this important. And I assume you can still survive an arrow or two.”_ Michael pointedly ignores the words like “probably” and “assume” that Ryan threw in, and before he can chicken out, he lifts the ender pearl up off of its cushion.

He waits a second, then another. When the world doesn’t come down around him, he looks down at the pearl in his hand. It’s cool to the touch and _pulsing_ with magic, making a chill run down his spine. Holding the core of an enderman is always...unsettling, at best. At worst, when he’s pretty sure he’s about to have to _use_ this thing to get into the stronghold, the magic feels dark and dangerous.

There’s light coming from the hole in the carving. It makes him do a double-take when he notices it out of the corner of his eye. When he tentatively walks up and peers through it, Michael sees a now-illuminated stone hallway lined with torches, ending in a set of stairs leading deeper down. There’s no way past the carving but _through._ He holds the pearl up to the hole--they line up perfectly.

That settles it, then. His throwing arm is fucked up so he shifts the pearl to his left, tucking Jeremy’s knife into this belt. He sizes up the trajectory, taking a few steps back and trying to line himself up. If he’s not far enough back, the pearl won’t break on impact and teleport him. But missing means teleporting face-first into a stone wall, which sounds like a great way to knock himself the fuck out. (And waste their last chance to get through the portal, which he tries not to think about.)

The ghosts wait in silence, and Michael _throws._

He watches the ender pearl sail through the hole, but there’s no time to celebrate. An instant later the whole world goes green, weightless, and spinning.

 

\---

 

The world comes back in time for him to slam his face into a stone wall. His first thought is _fucking ow,_ followed by panic of _did he even make it through the carving._ He stumbles back from the wall, dazed with what feels like blood running down his face, to see stairs ahead of him, and a blank stone wall behind him. _He made it. (And possibly broke his nose in the process.)_

_“Hell yeah!”_ Lindsay cheers, followed by an almost-creepy chorus of eight ghosts giving him a round of applause. _“We’re gonna spread out and check the rooms below,”_ she continues, _“Sit tight.”_

There’s a few minutes where Michael anxiously waits in the hallway, ears strained for any noises approaching him. He pulls the knife free from his belt when he hears what sounds like the low hiss of a spider, but nothing drifts too close to him. Every few seconds he peeks down the staircase just to be _sure,_ but the light down there is dim and the passageway twists off to the side at the foot of the stairs. He’s glad he has everyone here to help him, because he has no fucking idea how to _start_ navigating a stronghold. He knows that there’s maze-like stone passageways, a fuckload of annoying silverfish, and the portal buried somewhere within. He wishes he’d paid better attention the last time he was in one.

Lindsay’s ghost appears right in front of him, making him jump so hard he has to throw out a hand and catch himself before he can fall down the stairs. Lindsay’s face is serious, and Michael braces himself for bad news.

_“There’s a_ lot _of monsters down there, too many for you to fight. Endermen, skeletons, there’s no way we can see for you to sneak past all of them.”_

“Well I have to get through there _somehow,”_ he says in a harsh whisper, not wanting to alert the apparent horde of monsters to his presence.

_“I_ know _that.”_ Lindsay bites her lip. _“We talked about it, and we think your best bet is to try to run through them. The monsters might lose interest in chasing you if you’re fast enough. And in such close quarters they won’t be able to swarm you without getting in each other’s way.”_ Michael doesn’t say “You’re crazy,” or, even worse, “I’m not sure if I can do it.” Instead, he says--

“Alright, then. Lead the way.”

 

\---

 

The stairs end in a hallway that branches out to either side. The ghosts tell him to go right, so right he goes. He’s trying to brace himself for the moment the ghosts will tell him to start running, but all thinking about it does is make his heart pound. He’s so _close_ now. He can’t let everyone down.

He takes two more turns before he spots his first monster. A silverfish scuttles past up ahead. Michael holds his breath and it passes. And thank _fuck,_ because where there’s one of those things, there’s dozens waiting to crawl out of the fucking walls.

_“You need to turn right up here,”_ Lindsay says, _“But there’s a skeleton in that hallway. If you run past it fast enough, it won’t have time to draw its bow.”_ Michael nods to the empty air, swallowing thickly. Once he starts running, he’ll be making a fuckton of noise and every monster in this place will hear him coming from a mile away. He’ll probably have to run the rest of the way to the portal.

Michael takes a deep breath and turns the corner, starting to sprint. It’s not a _great_ sign that two seconds of running has dark spots floating in his vision, but there’s a skeleton he has to shove past and he is _not_ slowing down.

_“Left ahead.”_ Michael nods in between gasping breaths. The skeleton is making freaky fucking clicking noises but he can’t risk turning around to see what it’s doing. He’s _almost_ to the end of the hallway when his leg lights up in burning pain.

_Fast, but not fast enough._

_“Fuck!”_ He’s being too _loud_ but his knee buckles underneath his weight and he’s barely able to drag himself around the corner, eyes stinging with tears. He hears the clatter of a second arrow hitting uselessly against the stone wall behind him. Glancing down, he sees an arrow buried in his left calf. _“Fuck,”_ he hisses, at least trying to be quiet now, but it hurts so fucking _much._

The skeleton will probably be a little shit and follow him, so Michael limps as quickly as he can down the cobwebbed hallway. The bricks down here look older, bits of moss trying to spread. And there’s the ever-present, invisible buzz of magic in the air, growing stronger with every step. He passes a closed iron door, the chortle of an enderman coming from the other side. Michael keeps his eyes focused on the floor, and is glad when the ghosts don’t tell him to find a way in there.

He actually sees Lindsay’s ghost approach, this time--they really are getting stronger. The downside is he’s forced to see her face pinch with worry when she sees the arrow and how badly he’s limping. He’d love to tell her that he’s feeling fine, but they both know that’s not anywhere close to true.

_“You’re almost there, Michael. Two lefts and then a right. The hallways will get darker and narrower, then you’re at the portal room. Can’t miss it. There’s some monsters gathered down there, but move as fast as you can and it’ll all be over soon.”_

“Right,” Michael says. “All over soon, and then I can beat the _shit_ out of all of you for dying on me.”

_“Wouldn’t miss it,”_ Lindsay laughs, just as Ryan indignantly yells, _“It’s not_ my _fault I was murdered!”_

Michael opens his mouth to say that _Ryan_ was the one who started the whole murdering thing when an arrow comes flying over his shoulder, a few inches off from nailing him in the back of the skull. He breaks into a pathetic attempt at a run, cursing every god and demon he’s ever heard of in all of these shitty temples.

Two lefts, then a right, and he’s fucking _done_ with this maze of hallways and this whole goddamn world.

 

\---

 

The next silverfish _does_ spot him, and he’s reminded why he hates the damn things. It makes an awful, wet hiss and lunges up at him. Michael shakes it off, swearing up a storm. The walls start to pulse, groups of the damn things slithering out from the walls. _Fuck_ silverfish, and whatever demented god buried them in the walls of strongholds.

_“Next hallway has some endermen and an undead.”_

Michael limps around the corner, a new posse of silverfish rushing up behind him. He keeps his eyes down towards the floor as he spots the dark, emaciated limbs of endermen. The air is cold as he quickly shuffles past them, not looking up again until he hears the moan of an undead in his ear. He slashes out with his knife and catches it in the arm, the undead meeting the injury with a snarl. Michael tries to shove it out of his way way and bites his lip when it lashes out, claws slashing against his back.

_Just a little bit further._

A silverfish jumps up to bite at the back of his knee and he stumbles, barely catching himself with a hand against the stone walls. _Shit._ One crawls up his back and bites down--he shouts and just manages to swipe at it with the knife without stabbing himself in the process. Another turn, and silverfish are popping out of the fucking walls with every second, tangling up in each other. _At least they’re slowing each other down._

By the next hallway he can hardly breathe, gasping and wheezing in a pretty pathetic display. His chest _burns_ and his body is little more than a stinging patchwork of pains. His free hand is permanently bracing against the wall, the leg with an arrow still lodged in it is essentially useless, dragging along behind him.

_Fuck fuck_ fuck, _this fucking_ sucks.

An arrow stings against his side, an inch off from striking right through his back. He doesn’t know if it’s the same skeleton from before and he doesn’t _care,_ darting around the last corner before he can find out how many are chasing him.

This hallway is short and dark. Michael doesn’t give a shit about any of that, though, because at the end of it is an open doorway with light spilling out of it. _The portal room._

Fucking _finally._

He staggers towards it, a chorus of ghostly voices cheering him on. _“Just a few steps more, you’re almost done,”_ Gavin’s voice rings through his head, his ghost flickering in the doorway. Michael tries to quicken his steps, adrenaline desperately trying to drag him along, his frantically beating heart pumping blood out of his body with each beat.

Two silverfish jump up onto his bad leg with twin hisses and he falls with a shout. The world goes black the instant of impact, all his breath knocked out of his lungs. The second everything settles back into focus Michael’s flipping onto his back, clawing at the silverfish trying to attach themselves to his leg. The knife isn’t in his hands anymore and he doesn’t care to look for it, swatting with his hands until the silverfish hiss and let go.

Monsters are rounding the corner--two skeletons with an undead staggering between them. He sees a bright flash of green behind them-- _creeper._

He staggers to his feet and sets off in a haphazard sprint towards the door. _Come on, come on, almost there._ His knees buckle as he makes it through the doorway, barely catching himself against the doorframe in time. There’s a lever next to the door and Michael grabs it the instant he sees it, yanking it downward. The iron door slams shut behind him and he hears a silverfish hiss as it collides with it. Michael slumps against the wall, adrenaline rushing away as he scans the room and sees no monsters.

_“You should’ve let us check that for traps first, idiot!”_ Ryan yells, and Michael knows he’s right, but he also does not have it in him to care anymore now that there’s a thick slab of iron between him and the stronghold’s monsters.

“Fuck...that…” he wheezes between gasping breaths, doubled over and held up by the stone bricks. “Did you.... _see…._ how many...fucking monsters...there were?” He can hear them now, hissing and snarling at the door, but they can’t get in and creepers are fucking idiots who won’t explode unless they’re able to see him. In this shitfest of a world, this is probably the safest he’s been since he left the base.

_“It was still kind of stupid,”_ Ryan says, but his voice is lighter and teasing, now. Michael still lifts a middle finger up in the vague direction he assumes Ryan’s ghost is, and is met with a chuckle. After that the ghosts leave him be while he catches his breath, gasping in lungfuls of burning hot air. He tries to pull himself together as quickly as he can, not just because he’s so fucking _done_ with this world, but also because he’s not sure how much longer he can stay standing.

When his breathing settles and he’s finally able to stand without leaning against the wall, he turns towards the portal. There’s a bubbling pit of lava beneath it, and a small staircase leading up above it. In between the stairs and the lava is what Michael can only describe as an... _aberration._

The portal is a slash cut through each world, dark and teeming with stars. Paper thin when he faces it from the side and ringed with strange stones etched in a language long-dead. From above, as he staggers up the stairs and peers down at it, it seems to stretch outwards into infinity. The magic radiating off of it is so intense it almost chokes him, goosebumps rising on his arm even though the lava makes the room burning hot.

All he has to do is lean forward and fall, and then he’ll be in the next world. But--

“How sure are we that all of you will get pulled through the portal with me?” He’s been trying his hardest not to think about it, because a little bit of hope is better than none at all, but this is no exact science. They’ve never been in a world like this, one where anyone’s souls were trapped--they’ve always all fallen through the portal or brought the world down around themselves _together._

Lindsay and Gavin’s ghosts appear in front of him, hovering over the portal. They both look intact, now, no claw marks or deep arrow wounds. It’s just _them,_ whole except for the washed-out, colorless look to their bodies. The others appear around the edges of the portal, staying back and waiting.

“I don’t want to leave you all behind,” Michael repeats, trying to ignore the way his voice splinters and cracks. It’s been a bad fucking day, a bad fucking _world,_ but the idea of waking up without them in the next world is even worse.

_“You won’t,”_ Gavin says, reaching forward, and for a second Michael swears he can feel the weight of the translucent hand that settles on his shoulder. _“We’ll be right behind you.”_

_“Just like always,”_ Lindsay adds with a smile. Michael wants to see that smile a hundred times more with them both alive, both of them free from this world. He can go a little bit further to make that happen.

“Okay,” Michael says, half as confident as he feels. “See you on the other side.”

Then Michael steps forward, and he _jumps._

 

\---

 

The surface of the portal sinks under his weight before pulling him through into starry void. It’s _infinite_ and spinning past him so fast they blur and streak together. There’s no noise and no wind as he _falls,_ the void surging up around him.

Hands reach out towards him, pale in the starlight. Then the world narrows down to a pinprick, and disappears around him.

 

\---

 

Michael wakes up in a bed, and Lindsay is there.

He’s drowsy enough that the world feels thick and hazy. For a second he just stares dumbly up at her sitting in the bed beside him, mesmerized by the vibrant red hair falling against a cheek with no gouges from claws, a face that’s beautiful and fucking _alive._ Lindsay’s _here._

His body feels heavy and tired but he’s not in pain, so he scrambles upright so he can throw his arms around her. He feels her tense and then relax a moment later when she realizes it’s just him. Michael’s brain is still short-circuiting over the fact that she’s _here,_ warm and alive in his arms. He’s pretty sure a few tears leak out of his eyes, but Lindsay doesn’t say anything when they soak into her shirt.

“We’re in our house in Achievement City,” Lindsay says before the fear of _where are we, is this real,_ can set in.

“The others?” Michael asks, wincing at the roughness of his voice.

“They’re all here, and safe,” Lindsay reassures. “You’re the one who wouldn’t stop sleeping.” She pokes at his side accusingly and Michael laughs, pulling back to look at her.

“I bet you’re glad to not be burning in hell, then.”

“It was a dry heat,” she says with a grin.

“God, I fucking _love you,”_ Michael says. Then she kisses him, and the universe feels infinitely better with both of them back together again. It’s still hitting him in waves that they _made it out,_ that he was able to stumble his way to the end portal and they all escaped that shitty, _awful_ world. He still can hardly wrap his mind around the fact that Lindsay’s here in his arms--the need to see the others alive and well too starts to build up under his skin.

“We should probably head out and let the others know you woke up,” Lindsay says when they pull apart. They’ve known each other long enough that she can read him like a book, and he’s really appreciating that talent right now. “This world’s still unstable, anyway. Matt’s been keeping it together but with this many of us it’s starting to act up again, so we’ll just be using it as a stepping stone. Ryan’s been geeking out with him about all the dimension stuff he learned in the factory, so they’re trying to figure out where we’ll end up next.”

“As long as we can respawn, I literally do not fucking care where we go.”

“See you _say,_ that,” Lindsay says, gently nudging him until he gets off the bed, “but remember that time Ryan was stuck in a world with, just, hundreds of cows?”

“I still say that shit’s karma,” Michael mutters, hesitating as he reaches the door. His brain is still oscillating between how being here with Lindsay is an indescribable relief, and how it almost feels too good to be true. Lindsay, the fucking saint, steps past him to swing the door open before he can put this off for a hundred years, taking him by the arm and leading him outside.

It’s been a long time since he’s seen Achievement City. Everything’s mostly in place--the logo as bright and ridiculous as ever, the shadow of Geoff’s tower casting shade over the whole thing. Michael can see the instability, though, the clouds stuttering and warping up in the sky. Before long chunks of the ground will start to disappear and they’ll run out of time here yet again.

The town center is bustling with activity, Jack carrying plates full of food with Alfredo and Trevor in tow, Jeremy chatting with Geoff while trying to water a very much withered garden. It’s a relief to see everything so... _normal_ despite the growing instability of this world. That relief only grows when he spots Gavin sitting outside of his house, fiddling with a busted flint and steel. He jumps up when he sees Michael and Lindsay, bounding over and wrapping both of them up in a crushing hug.

_“Michael!_ You did it, Michael!” Gavin’s all-but shouting in Michael’s ear. Usually he’d tell him to shut the fuck up before he bursts his eardrums, but he’s missed the sound so much that right now he doesn’t care a bit. It’s a hell of a lot better than a voice echoing around his head, at any rate.

“All I did was follow you guys around and get fucked up by monsters.” It’s the truth, but Gavin still makes an offended noise, finally releasing the two of them.

“You’re still the one who had to jump through the portal ‘n all that.”

“Speaking of,” Lindsay cuts in before Michael can defend that getting led around by ghosts and having his ass kicked every two minutes is  _far_ from impressive. “Do you think you’d be good to jump through another one? I think Matt and Ryan are almost ready for us.”

“Yeah, I think I’m ready.” A large part of him is fucking horrified at the possibility that they could fall right back into a world like the last, no matter how slim the chances. The more rational side of himself tries to remind him that the last world was a fluke, and Matt and Ryan know way more about this dimension shit than he ever will. If anyone can send them somewhere nice, it’s those two. The one thing the warring parts of himself can agree on, though, is that he wants to spend the next world with Lindsay and Gavin at his side. Exploring a new world, building a house, hell, maybe even getting a cat like he told Lindsay they could.  

As long as they’re all together, Michael will go anywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this story! Here's some trivia about it:  
> \- This story was born because both Sky Factory and YDYD gave me a lot of feelings and inspiration, so I started with trying to figure out a multiverse-type situation where all of the events in both could be "canon" at once, and ended up with this almost 17k monster.  
> \- This story took me five months of on/off work to write, so I'm very happy to see it done! I also experienced a significant loss like...two days into seriously working on it, so that really shaped the mood of this story.  
> \- I wrote about thirteen pages of it by hand! Most of that was between or during classes (sorry @ my philosophy professor)  
> \- The word "fuck" or some variation thereof was used a whopping 105 times in this story. Second place goes to "shit" at only 45.  
> That's all, and thank you again for taking the time to read my work! I really do appreciate it


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